Conferencing

A Phoenix rising from the ashes -- not sure this is the appropriate image but it sure is colorful

A few people have asked me recently to throw my hat in the ring about the health of VoIP. Many bloggers have been eulogizing the technology while I was on vacation - ironically using more VoIP than I ever have.

Objectivity is the subject of today's thoughts - primarily because I came across a pretty harsh criticism of me being biased towards a particular vendor. I was going to link to the posts where an anonymous individual decided to skewer me but I then realized that the poster could be a short seller of the stock of the company in question or perhaps a disgruntled former or present employee.

Seldom, I do get criticism from people saying I am biased towards or against companies. They say I brownnose or they say I am in the pocket of this company or that.

More calls, more CEOs, more problems. There seem to be more and more companies coming out of the woodwork who now realize they need to focus on sales and marketing in 2009 for their survival. It seems these companies founded themselves for the sole purpose of being sold to Cisco and other solid companies and now those dreams have slowed or in some cases vanished.

Yes, the big tech companies are still purchasing but if they don't pick you up now, there are limited opportunities for future funding.

I get these calls and all I can think is "You're waiting until the middle of the recession to start thinking about how you get customers?" I could say more but the sheer lunacy of the whole situation doesn't allow me to articulate without peppering my writing with obscenities.

For those of us in telecom and tech, there is obvious concern about where the economy is headed - just like any other industry. The difference for us is we have seen a recent bubble burst and don't have the excess in our markets which other markets do. In fact in 2000, the dotcom bubble burst in March and the telecom bubble in November.

Most CEOs I speak with in our industry tell me tech and communications are among the best industries to be in for 2009 and beyond.

If you are an iPhone or iPod Touch user and have been wondering when... Oh when will Rich Tehrani get an iMac in the hands (we are a PC shop) of his talented development and design teams so you can take the best of TMCnet on the go? Yes, we have a mobile site already at mobile.tmcnet.com but this is not really iPhone friendly.

Dialogic has officially acquired the communications platforms division of NMS as of Friday evening and I had the opportunity to speak with Dialogic's Senior Vice President of Marketing Jim Machi about the acquisition and the future of the company. You may recall, I first reported on the news back on September 12th.

Before I get into the conversation with Machi, it is worth pointing out that the major competition in the CTI space between Dialogic, NMS and Brooktrout has finally come to an end this past weekend.

These companies were at each other's throats in decades past but as they competed, the industry thrived. More importantly, this rivalry caused the communications market to open to the point where a high school kid can develop telephony apps in the cloud with no knowledge of underlying telephony networks. CTI was a huge step towards openness in telecom and as these building blocks which were used for computer telephony integration began to be applied to IP communications and more specifically, VoIP - the world changed.

The opportunity for companies like Dialogic is changing and while VoIP is a big part of the company's business, video is a strong part of the future.

While many of you were busy in the malls this past weekend or trying to find the best price on that new digital camera yesterday on Cyber Monday, the dedicated team of designers and programmers here at TMC worked day and night and night and day to bring you a new look and feel.

Over the past years, many of you have told me that you love to come to TMCnet on a daily basis and the hundreds of stories and blog entries we write on a daily basis contain everything you need to navigate the telecom and tech worlds. At the same time, many of you have told us the interface TMCnet has looks busy. Others have told me it is not clear that 50-100 writers contribute to TMCnet on a daily/weekly basis.

Our new redesign is meant to adress all of these great requests and we hope you enjoy the new TMCnet.

One last point... Thanks to the 2-3 million communications and technology decision makers who visit TMCnet monthly and thanks to the TMC team for doing such a great job on this redesign.

Today, TMC launches its Blog Aid program to help people out of work stay in the public eye - in order to improve their hiring prospects in a tough economy. In the last few months, many good marketers, PR people, engineers and others who have been laid off. These potential Blog Aid bloggers have a good deal of quality commentary and information to share which could be very useful to the TMC community of online readers.

TMC is offering these new bloggers - especially those working in the communications and technology industries, a venue to voice their thoughts on the spaces where they have expertise so as to allow them access to the 2-3 million global visitors who come to TMCnet on a monthly basis.